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| Mike and Chantell Sackett |
EPA to property owner: 'Your land is our land'
$40 million in fines pending over plan to build new home
That's the case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, with briefs being filed today by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of a Priest Lake, Idaho, family, Chantell and Mike Sackett.
Attorney Damien Schiff, who will be arguing before the high court in the case, said it's simply a case of a government run amok, and it poses a potential threat to perhaps not every landowner across the nation, but untold millions.
The Sacketts, Schiff said, "bought property, and the government in effect has ordered them to treat the property like a public park."
"The EPA has not paid them a dime for that privilege," he said. "The regime we have operating now allows the EPA to take property without having to pay for it, or giving the owners the right to their day in court.""
The organization has prepared a video to explain the case:
The case developed when the Sacketts bought a .63-acre parcel of land for $23,000 in a subdivision in their hometown of Priest Lake, Idaho. The land is 500 feet from a lake, had a city water and sewer tap assigned, had no running or standing water and was in the middle of other developed properties.
Mike and Chantell Sackett are being treated as criminals by EPA regulators who contend their vacant lot in northern Idaho is a "jurisdictional wetland," and the gravel fill they placed on the lot to prepare for construction of a new home is a violation of the Clean Water Act. There's no standing water on the property, or anything that resembles a wetland. Given no choice by the EPA or lower courts to directly appeal the wetland determination, the Sacketts, represented by PLF attorneys, are fighting back. This winter, their lawsuit will be heard in the United States Supreme Court. pacificlegal.org/Sackett
The couple obtained all of the needed permits for their project and started work. Suddenly, the Environmental Protection Agency showed up on the building site, demanded that the work stop and issued a "compliance order" that the couple remove the fill they had brought in, restore the land to its native condition, plant trees every 10 feet, fence it off and let it sit for three years.
Then they would, for costs estimated at roughly a quarter of a million dollars, be allowed to "request" permission from the government to build on their own land. Or else, warned the agency, there is the possibility of fines of $37,500 per day – with the total now surpassing $40 million.
Chantell reported she was told by the EPA that if "you're buying a piece of property you should know if it's in wetlands. I started to do research. I said, 'So how do I find this piece of property in the wetlands [registry]'? And she said, 'Here's the coordinates.' When I actually pulled up the coordinates, it's not there." No matter, said the government. Do what we want.
So the Sacketts went to court, only to be told the courts can't address a decision like this, as it's an administrative decision. The couple would have to meet the demands of the "compliance order" and pay the $250,000 to apply for a building permit, then challenge the eventual decision.
Or they could expose themselves to $37,500 per day in fines by refusing to cooperate. . . . Further, the "compliance order" also demands that the private property owners give the EPA full access not only to the lands but to their private records about what is done to the land.
"Given that the order is not based on probable cause, it withdraws the Sacketts' constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches by requiring them to grant access to 'all records and documentation related to the conditions at the site and th restoration activities conducted pursuant to this order.'"
The EPA ordered the planting of specific trees and shrubs and then demanded that the land "be fenced for the first three growing seasons. Monitoring of vegetation on the restored site for survival and ground coverage shall be performed in October 2008, June 2009, October 2009, and October 2010," . . . .
The district court rejected their case, as did the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. . . .
Schiff told WND earlier that there is "no question that the power the EPA is claiming it has under the Clean Water Act is significant." "Even if you have a good basis to think the EPA is wrong, the EPA won't let you get into the courthouse," he said. "They are able to shut the courthouse door by issuing compliance orders that are not judicially reviewable."
That puts a landowner in the impossible situation of either complying with the order with its potential cost of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars or facing that same penalty in fines. And it's not just the Sacketts' land that could be subject to such orders. The foundation arguments suggest that private property across the nation could be at risk.
EPA officials have declined WND requests for comment. They referred WND to a Department of Justice office, which did not respond.
The legal team noted that between 1980 and 2001, the EPA issued up to 3,000 compliance orders every year across the nation.
"The reality of the Sacketts' situation is that they have been unambiguously commanded by their government not to complete their home-building project, to take expensive measures to undo the improvements that they have made to their land, and to maintain their land essentially as a public park until the property is 'restored' to the satisfaction of the EPA. They have been threatened with frightening penalties if they do not immediately obey; but they have been refused the prompt hearing they should have received as a matter of right in any court," Pacific Legal argued. . . . Read Full Story
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